Why Were There So Many Strikes in 2023?

It was called the “summer of strikes” or “hot strike summer” – only the movement continued into fall and winter, too.

More than half a million workers staged nearly 400 strikes during the first 11 months of 2023, according to Cornell University’s Labor Action Tracker.

“I think it’s fair to say that, relative to the rest of the 21st century, this is quite a big uptick,” says Johnnie Kallas, the project director of the tracker.

From auto workers to Hollywood actors and writers to airline pilots to UPS, strikes or the threat of strikes proved to be a powerful tool for workers in 2023. But why this year specifically?

Many union contracts happened to be up in 2023. But it was more than just that. Workers felt empowered by other highly visible and successful strikes (or threats to strike) and a tight labor market, emboldening them to ask for higher pay and other benefits as inflation claimed more money from their pockets.

“It really is the first contract many of these unionized workers are negotiating since the beginning of the pandemic, and I think a ton has changed since the beginning of the pandemic,” Kallas says.

It’s especially true for health care workers who were in the front lines of the pandemic and who may also be dealing with feelings of burnout and seeking better working conditions. Kaiser Permanente workers, for example, walked off the job in October in the largest strike of health care workers in U.S. history.

“Then you combine that with pay increases that certainly pretty much anywhere haven’t kept up with inflation over the past few years, and you have a situation where workers are – in a lot of ways, rightfully so – demanding much more in these current contract negotiations,” Kallas says.

To be sure, the level of strike activity – while high relative to the 21st century – is significantly lower than it has been in the past. In the 1970s, about 5,000 work stoppages involved more than 2 million workers each year on average.

Now, Kallas says that employers are “much more resistant to both union organizing and strikes than maybe they were in the mid 20th century.”

And it shows. The rate of union membership has declined from 20% in 1983 to 10% last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Still, unions have the backing of President Joe Biden and potentially most of the public.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published in September, the majority of Americans regardless of party affiliations say that labor unions have improved the quality of life for working Americans. They also expressed support for the United Auto Workers strike and the Writers Guild of America strike.

“I think the alliance of the public and the labor movement has a potential to influence these dynamics even more in 2024 than we saw in 2023,” says Sharon Block, a professor at Harvard Law School and the executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy.

The moves, however, come with risks. While the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 protects most workers rights to strike for better working practices or wages, striking workers can potentially be permanently replaced at their workplace.

“Striking is never easy, even right now, when it seems like there are a lot of strikes and there’s a lot of enthusiasm around strikes,” Kallas says. “Workers don’t want to be on strike.”

More challenges await in 2024. The tight labor market that put workers in a powerful position to bargain previously has started to ease in some industries.

“We are expecting to see more softening in labor market trends going forward,” says Lydia Boussour, a senior economist at EY-Parthenon. “So there’s going to be an environment where workers are going to be less confident.”

Kallas says the U.S. is at a critical moment for labor movements.

“We’re really, in a lot of ways, determining whether this moment for labor becomes a truly sustainable one with sort of sustained gains over time, or if it represents something more temporary,” Kallas says.